


Razzle Dazzle

by Thimblerig



Category: Original Work
Genre: Big Ships And Sharp Women, F/F, Heists, Period: Post WWI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27396088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Gaby leaned in, close enough that Tui could feel the warmth of her, and touched another photograph over her shoulder - a shot taken from a port with the Prinzessin settled comfortably in blue water, painted in a gaudy asymmetrical display that teased the eyes in baffling camouflage. “The ol’ razzle-dazzle,” she said, her lips curling at the corners, “can’t tell whether the lady’s comin’ or going..."
Relationships: Charismatic Detective/Phantom Thief
Comments: 15
Kudos: 13
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	Razzle Dazzle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comicArtistA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comicArtistA/gifts).



The  _ Mount Whitney _ was sinking. Once more something exploded under the water - another hidden mine - and the aging, beautiful liner staggered in the unnerving currents under the dark blue water. Tui Campbell looked up into the bright air - the blue so bright, the clouds so white, scattered with still-winged birds gliding in the brisk air, observing the events like a play. It really was a beautiful day.

“Hands up!”

Oh right. That.

Tui shrugged and lifted her hands away from her sides a little. “I’m really not who you think I am.”

Charlie Parker did not shift his rifle, the Pinkerton’s hands steady on the trigger and stock, the crows-feet around his eyes cut deep. “I was thinking, Missus,” he said in a honeyed drawl that reminded Tui bitterly of other things, “I was thinking that our Soleil, he’s all flash and mirrors and sparkle. A magician among the thieving kind. But my Pops, he used to work a mop at the Prestige Theatre back home, an’ he used to tell me all the tricks those magic-folk use. They wear black, and they stash themselves in compartments any which where. And they got someone ordinary sneaking around, while we all stare at the flash.”

Slowly, Tui said, “Yes, I know that.”

“An’ then I got to thinking, about who’s  _ ordinary _ on this old ship, leaving flashy notes about that statue he’s gonna walk off with. Staff. Nobody ever looked at my Pops, Missus Campbell.”

Tui’s cool, amber eyes flashed with ironic humour. “Are you going to tell me that the butler did it?”

Parker laughed shortly, hands steady on the rifle. “So I took a peek in your rooms while you was at the big dance, sorry, I know that ain’t strickly legal, and what did I see? A uniform.  _ For a stewardess.” _

Tui took a breath, “But that’s -” she said, but then subsided. She hoped, with the sun at her back, that the Pinkerton could not see her cheeks warming.  _ Gaby Clay, _ she thought,  _ I am going to end you one day. _

“How long?” he breathed. “How long have you been slipping around stealing shi-  _ stuff  _ from under a magician’s cloak?” Behind him, one of the four funnels of the ship cracked and leaned aslant. Tui could feel the ship tilting underfoot.

She sighed. “Did you also see the credentials from SOE?”

The crows-feet around his eyes deepened.

“Are you funning me, missus?”

“I worked Intelligence during the War, Mr Parker.” Tui shifted her vowels, to the plummiest RP accent she could muster. “I haven’t left my old contacts entirely behind. Some of them asked me to look into the infamous Soleil.” 

He hesitated.

Then, “Well,  _ shit.” _

“There’s a badge in my inner coat pocket,” she said politely. “If you’d like to see?” Two-fingered, very slowly, she eased one lapel of her tweed travelling jacket open, fumbling for who-knew-what. Right now, she only wanted to keep the man talking for long enough…

The ship staggered again and Tui and the Pinkerton both slipped off balance - Parker to one knee, and Tui prone on the slippery deck. Miraculously, the gun did not go off. She spared a glance as the tilt of the ship reached its balance point - there was a gap in the railing that showed one of the iron ladders was nearby. Probably. “Oh, the hell with it,” she muttered, and let the slow, inexorable tilt of the ship slide her forwards over the slippery deck towards it. As her lanky body shot out into the vasty air her hands shot down, reaching on trust for the rungs of the ladder, and she turned the movement into a half somersault, ending with a jarring thud as her back hit the railings. 

She shuddered, gasping for breath, and her hands released spasmodically, dropping her to the deck below. She doubled over, hands on knees, and wheezed frantically.  _ That’s one more to your account, Soleil, _ she thought with bitter venom.

“Freeze!” he roared from above.

“I don’t have time for this!” she shouted back, and set off in a staggering run.

* * *

The word had been out for weeks: in the cafes and the offices, and the frosty streets of New York where children played in cheap gilt masks and particolour cloaks, at water fountains where the cable girls traded their gossip, in the high offices of the insurance companies where grave men in sharp suits traded in numbers: Soleil would take  _ la Dame de la Mer, _ that sensuous, glistening statue of a woman carved from ancient, sea-brined wood by an old man of Namur. It was going back to Belgium for a year, to tour Brussels and Ghent and Bruges in grand display. And nobody, not the museum that owned it, nor the country that wanted it, would countenance its loss.

And so, by careful, subtle degrees, Tui Campbell, who had better things to do really, was nudged onto  _ this _ liner, on  _ this _ date. Through this disaster.

She ran through crowded passageways, forcing her way through scattered crowds of First Class passengers blinking their eyes at the alarm klaxon and mustering themselves to the lifeboat stations, and stopped briefly to check the doors to the Second and Third Class areas weren’t locked. There was a service entrance set against one bulkhead, painted to match the decor, and Tui hit the latch and slipped inside, into the underside of the ship’s life, unpainted bulkheads and stairs that clanged underfoot - the passages where the work happened. She heard footsteps and leaned her back against the grimy wall, wheezing, and trying to trace the direction.

Pointless. The rest of the crew would be using these tunnels also.

Tui drew in another breath against the spasming of her back and thought bitterly of the bright-eyed, clever-handed young stewardess who had shown her the doors. So helpful. So candid about all the ship’s secrets. So… open.

_ Don’t you just love fast cars and fancy women? Or is that…? _

_ Mmmm, so long as they can dance I don’t care which.  _

_ You’re singing my song, Missuz Campbell... _

Damn her.

* * *

The First Class Dining Hall was vast, and echoing, and elegant, and open. Tui glanced briefly at the remains of the third course of the luncheon, disturbed by the alarms, and up. The ship had turned so that the sun burned through the gaudy, graceful colours of the tall Art Nouveau picture windows, the twisting chains of glass flowers so bright they burned the eyes.  _ La Dame de la Mer _ was still there, the one believed to be a fake, her dark wood turned stark black in the silhouette. The lines of her teased at the eyes and, once again, Tui could not decide whether the curve of the wooden lady’s hand, the turn of her head, meant  _ triumph. _ Or  _ grief. _

_ “Of course I know where La Dame is,” she said pitifully, flipping the damp cloth so the cooler side rested against her aching eyes. “It’s where it always was, on display in the dining hall.” _

_ “Wait, what? Soleil switched it with a replica. I saw his little doodle on the base and everything.” _

_ “The doodle was there, yes.” _

_ Gaby made a small, curious sound, reminiscent of a cat waiting extremely patiently for a treat. _

_ “Which is easier, do you think?” breathed Tui, “switching out something of that weight in the five minutes the lights are out -” _

_ “It was seven, I counted.” _

_ “Or just sneaking up, signing the base, and just waiting until the trip is over and the ‘replica’ is in a poorly guarded evidence locker?” _

_ She heard the stewardess rustle in movement, in the dim light of her quarters. “My, you really are as sharp as a new pin, Missuz Campbell.” _

_ “Call me Tui.”  _

_ Another rustle, and a fresh, cool cloth was laid over her aching eyes. “Will do.” A pause. “Tui.” _

Something moved behind the dark bulk of the old statue - a flutter of the corner of a tatterdemalion cloak, a hint of a sun-spangled mask against the burn of the windows. One white-gloved hand curved tenderly, possessively about the lady’s neck, fingers touching the notch at the dip of her throat. Another held a rope line, dangling from the ceiling, ready to tangle.

_ “Freeze!” _ someone shouted raggedly. Tui saw, under the cream-and-crimson arch of the main door, Charlie Parker and two other Pinkertons, rifles raised.

“Stand down!” she shouted back. “Soleil isn’t a killer, put your damn guns away!”

From behind her, in the service passageways, a small hand clutched her arm hard enough to bruise. “Come away,” someone said rapidly in French-accented English. “Come away, Madame, you don’t want to see this.”

Tui shook the hand off, and shouted, “If  _ La Dame _ gets damaged, you won’t ever be paid.”

_ “Move and I’ll fire, statue-bedamned,” _ roared the Pinkerton. His eyes shone too bright - a hunter unwilling to surrender prey. 

“No, really,” the woman behind her said, catching at her hand in the shadows.

Against the burn of the windows, Soleil shifted, head raising so that the insolent sun-splattered sneer showed full on the phantom thief’s gaudy mask.

“Stop!”

The Pinkertons fired. One bullet hit the statue’s arm, digging a notch into the ancient wood. Another went wide, staggered by the lurching of the ship, and hit the antique windows behind.

The last hit its mark. As the shining, shattered shards of the picture window exploded in the brilliant light, Tui saw Soleil shudder, and one white-gloved hand press hesitantly against the phantom thief’s chest. Blood showed against the white. A pause. And Soleil was falling.

Tui screamed.

* * *

She’d known a week ago. Down in the narrow corridors and secret ways of the old ship, she’d known who the thief Soleil really was.

_ Gaby put her finger to her lips, eyes bright. “This way,” she whispered, beckoning Tui into a narrow metal door almost hidden by the fall of shadow and light. Inside was a cupboard and a ladder, and she climbed it nimbly, even favouring her sprained wrist. She leaned through the hatch in the ceiling and offered her hand as Tui climbed, and soon both of the women were sitting in a tiny, slant-walled room, lined with pictures and faded, looping signatures on the drab metal. _

_ “They made her over,” Gaby said. “She was handed over to the good ol’ USA after the war, but this is who the Mount Whitney used to be: Prinzessin Victoria Luise, youngest of the Five Flyers.” _

_ “I knew that,” said Tui, whisking up her skirt to sit more comfortably. She leaned forward and touched a sepia photograph of a serried line of crewmen, faces long and serious over their stiff uniforms.  _

_ “There’s always something left behind, in a do-over.” Gaby leaned in, close enough that Tui could feel the warmth of her, and touched another photograph over her shoulder - a shot taken from a port with the Prinzessin settled comfortably in blue water, painted in a gaudy asymmetrical display that teased the eyes in baffling camouflage. “The ol’ razzle-dazzle,” she said, her lips curling at the corners, “can’t tell whether the lady’s comin’ or going. She was a commerce-raider during the war, did you know that?” _

_ “I did not,” answered Tui, watching the stewardess’s face. _

_ “Armed for four years. Raided 16 ships. They kept reporting her sunk, but… nah, too tough. Never took a single life.” Gaby flattened her hand over the picture. “That’s a Prinzessin for you. Real fancy Fräulein.” _

_ “You like the Germans?” Tui asked, still watching the other woman’s face, shifting in the light and shadows cast by the little storm lantern. _

_ “Can’t say that I do.” Gaby stroked the wall gently with her thumb, and then grinned. “But their ships are neat.” _

Oh yes, Tui had known, in the younger woman’s bright eyes and clever hands and her  _ pride _ in travelling in a thief ship. Tui had known. But she couldn’t prove a lick of it, not yet, and Gaby was so very warm against her side. So she waited, another day, another hour…

Tui damned herself most of all.

* * *

Someone was dragging her through the service corridors, hauling her with a steely grip on her collar up narrow, steel-runged staircases.

“Let me go, damn you!” 

They were nearly at the upper deck - Tui could see slanting spears of yellow daylight laid across the dust in the air. “I have to go back,” she insisted, “you don’t understand.”

Something hard and cold prodded against Tui’s back and she swore silently. Coolly, again in French-accented English, the other said, “The ship is sinking. You will get to the lifeboats or I will shoot you myself and end the trouble.”

The  _ Mount Whitney _ \- the  _ Prinzessin  _ \- shuddered again and Tui shifted, side-stepped… on the shifting ground she scuffled around and seized one narrow wrist from behind her. She felt her assailant shudder at the grip and turned to see a small woman dressed for heavy labour, in boots and dun-coloured pants and a drab woollen jersey. A woollen cap was pulled low over her head, almost hiding mouse brown hair starting to fall out of artificial curls. The battered spanner she’d been holding as a pretend revolver lowered and dropped from slack fingers. Her eyes crinkled from pain. Her face was turned aside, but it did nothing to hide her.

Tui let go of the woman’s wrist and stepped back - the other lifted it gingerly and cradled it, careful of the bandaging around an old sprain.

“Gaby Clay,” Tui breathed. “Not dead after all.”

“Eheh.” Gaby smiled weakly, the French still in her voice. “I go by Claes, a lot of the time.”

“You would have had compatriots of course,” Tui noted, voice clinical. “A mask and a costume is easy enough to put a helper in. Or -”

“Puppetry, actually. This time. Soleil was always going to be shot today. He needs to be dead for a little tiny bit.”

_ “Damn you,” _ Tui hissed, setting her hands to the little thief’s shoulders and pressing her back against the bulkhead. She was trembling.

“I’m sorry,” Gaby protested rapidly, “you really weren’t supposed to see that, you were meant to be in the lifeboats by now, you -”

She squeaked, as the taller woman kissed her.

“You must think me the worst fool,” Tui breathed after, the taste of Gaby on her lips.

“Never,” Gaby whispered. “You almost screwed me over three times, poking your nose every which way. It was… ineffably frustrating.”

Tui Campbell’s lips quirked. “And distracting, I hope.” She huffed air through her nose. “But you’re not stealing  _ La Dame de la Mer _ if I can help it.”

“Sorry,” Gaby answered, eyes brightening. “It cannot be helped. I do not know how to stop taking things.”

“That’s a national treasure.”

“And maybe I think it should stay in its own nation, then?”

“You -” 

Gaby stifled her protest with a kiss of her own, hot and wet and… desperate, and then slowly pushed her away. “C’mon,” she said then, a honeyed drawl back in her throat. “Time to get the Missuz onto the boats.” She led Tui with a gentle hand on her elbow, up the last set of stairs to the sunlit deck, to the railing.

It was still brilliant, the sky - the blue and the white - and the birds hung themselves in the high air, watching. The last of the lifeboats was already being lowered on winches.

Gaby hissed between her teeth. “I knew I cut it too fine,” she muttered. “Can’t be helped.” Then she pushed Tui Campbell over the rail.

The surface of the water hit Tui’s bruised back with a brutal smack and she sank into the icy brine. She kicked off her shoes and kicked desperately. When she broached the border of water and air she wheezed frantically, and kicked. And looked up, to see little Gaby on the high deck, leaning against the rail, quite black against the sun behind her, and watching her carefully. The  _ Prinzessin _ and her odd rocking had calmed considerably.

“By the way,” Gaby called down. “Did I mention I’m stealing the ship, too?”

Tui muttered something unprintable, still wheezing, and then shouted up, “This isn’t over!”

The phantom thief snapped a crisp, military salute. “Be seeing you!”

_ fin _

**Author's Note:**

> // The _Mount Whitney/Prinzessin Victoria Luise_ is an imaginary ship, but modelled heavily after the _Konprinze Wilhelm_ and the other three Kaiser Class “superliners” built by Norddeutcher Lloyd around the turn of the 19th century. They were all built for luxury and speed (two won the Blue Riband for fastest Transatlantic Crossing) and most were converted for military use during WWI. In particular, I borrowed my _Prinzessin’_ commerce-raiding career from the _Konprinze Wilhelm._ (In this universe, there were Five Flyers, not Four.)
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser-class_ocean_liner  
> 
> 
> // Razzle-dazzle camouflage was a real thing, I swear.
> 
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage 


End file.
